Freddie has been located!

The People’s Map Points of Interest competition, where users were asked to locate Freddie, an Australian tourist, has ended and we are pleased to announce that the winner of the competition is JohnB who not only located Freddie, but also won the prize for creating the most points of interest. JohnB created a total of 277 points of interests in London during the last three months. He only managed to locate Freddie’s position at the Imperial War M during final month just as other contributors were getting closer.

Congratulations to JohnB who wins £250 worth of High Street Shopping vouchers for finding Freddie, and another £250 worth for adding the most points of interest. We would also like to thank JohnB and all others who contributed POI's during this time.

Please keep contributing and keep your eyes peeled for the next competition!

For anyone who may not have been to the Imperial War Museum, here is a little bit of information about it.

In 1917 the Cabinet decided that a National War Museum should be set up to collect and display material relating to the Great War, which was then still being fought. The interest taken by the Dominion governments led to the museum being given the title of Imperial War Museum. It was formally established by Act of Parliament in 1920 and a governing Board of Trustees appointed. The Museum was opened in the Crystal Palace by King George V on 9 June 1920. From 1924 to 1935 it was housed, under very difficult conditions, in two galleries adjoining the former Imperial Institute, South Kensington. On 7 July 1936 the Duke of York, shortly to become King George VI, reopened the Museum in its present home.

More information can be found at http://london.iwm.org.uk/

Find Freddie Competition Deadline Extended

Firstly we would like to say well done to all of you hunters out there who have been adding points of interest into the People's Map of London over the last two months and for trying to locate our lost tourist Freddie. You have contributed greatly to the map and it is very much appreciated.

However, no-one has yet managed to locate Freddie so we are going to extend the competition for a further month so that someone can win the £250 worth of high street shopping vouchers! To make it even easier, we are going to give you some clues over that month via Twitter, Facebook and this blog. These should help one of you to locate Freddie and win. If you are not already a follower or friend to People’s Map on Twitter or Facebook then find us using the following links:

http://twitter.com/peoplesmap
Facebook: Peoples Map

Someone has to win the £250 worth of shopping vouchers, so why not make sure it's you! The first clue will be released on Monday 5th October, so you have a few days to get prepared. You will have until 31st October 2009 to Find Freddie.

We have closed the other half of the competition for the person who contributed the most points of interest during August and September. The winner's name will be revealed shortly, once we have carried out the verification exercise. That person will have won £250 shopping vouchers. Just perfect with Christmas coming up!

So good luck to all in your pursuit of Freddie.

People’s Map Adds Administration, Postcode and Health Authority Boundaries

The People’s Map has added new Administrative, Postcode and Health Authority boundary layers to its growing list of data products. Administrative layers include Unitary, County and Metropolitan Borough Councils. Postcode data includes areas, districts, sectors and centroids. Other boundary information includes Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts, all supplied by People’s Map partner XYZ. These are all available for use in GIS and local information systems and in other digital file formats suitable for use in general office software and the web.

One of the first to benefit from this new data are Geowise who now offer a ‘Map Pack’ to compliment its InstantAtlas™ statistical visualisation platform. “Some of these layers are unique. The Map Pack we offer is the most cost-effective way of delivering ‘fit-for-use’ boundaries for InstantAtlas,” said Mike Forster Managing Director of Geowise.

People's Map Update on RSPSoc 2009

The RSPSoc conference was once again a big success bringing in businesses and academics from all parts of the remote sensing and photogrammetry industry. Throughout the week there were many seminars and discussions linking to the current hot topic; freeing restricted datasets.

The People’s Map caused much debate in the presentation Chris Mewse gave on Thursday on how our map product is likely to change the landscape of digital mapping in the UK. As mentioned in the previous blog, the presentation aimed to encourage Universities and Online Learning Resources to adopt the People’s Map as an education and teaching tool. This concept has been met with much interest and we will start rolling out more trials of our WMS and GIS Data feeds very soon.

We’d like to thank the RSPSoc committee for holding such an interesting and diverse event, and also everyone who visited our stand and attended our presentation.